


To the Very Last Mile

by Tabithian



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, IN SPACE!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 08:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabithian/pseuds/Tabithian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason's a goddamn champ at making bad decisions, just look at his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To the Very Last Mile

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully part of a larger universe?
> 
> Also, _space_. 
> 
> *hands*

“This really wasn't one of your best ideas.”

Jason stops, turns to look at Harper, replacement conduit coils in her hands and spray of hydraulic fluid and across one shoulder of her jumpsuit and blood dotting the edges of a tear on her upper arm. Cullen's somewhere behind her, lugging around her toolkit, one arm in a makeshift sling.

The _Hood's_ a mess, drifting towards the traffic lanes leaking air and plasma and twisted bits of metal. To conserve what little power they have left they've had to seal off the cargo hold and living quarters, and life support is running at minimal levels. 

Jason's a goddamn champ at making bad decisions, just look at his life.

“No,” Jason says, eyes narrowing when Harper lifts her chin, never one to back down when Jason's like this. “It's not.”

Harper and Cullen have been with him long enough to know he doesn't exactly have a record for making smart decisions. Hell, he only ever seems to make bad ones, but this.

“Get her up and running as soon as you can,” he says, tamping down on his anger. “I need to find out how fucked we are, here.”

Harper eyes him, skeptical. She knows as well as he does the odds of being picked up out here without an emergency beacon, knows how far off from the shipping lanes they are. Has to know that she and that brother of hers could have done better for themselves than taking up with someone like him. Shady looking pilot with a beaten up ship and a little brat in tow. 

Still.

“We get raises after this,” she says, turning back to the engine room, Cullen limping along behind. “Big, big raises.”

Jason watches them go, battered and bruised but still straight-backed, and knows this could have been worse, so much worse.

Luck or fate, but this isn't over yet and he's never been one to put his faith in either.

********

Jason's chest deep in the navigation console in the cockpit, fingers sore and bleeding, and - 

“Todd, this is unacceptable.”

“I know,” Jason mumbles around the bundle of wires in his mouth. “Now fucking shut up about it and get communications back.”

The _Hood_ 's an old ship, last of her kind. A relic, if you're going to be unkind, but she can still hold her own after all this time. More importantly, she can dish it out.

Half the mechanics Jason's tried to hire on over the years didn't know what to make of her, specs years out of date with whatever they learned in school. The other half didn't know how to treat her, old warhorse that she is. Moody and temperamental and vindictive when she wants to be.

He can hear the brat moving around, clatter and clang as he works on getting communications operational, exhaustion underscoring his words.

It's been half a day since the ambush, and they're slowly getting the _Hood_ back up and running. Harper's got the auxiliary engines back online, but that's not going to get them far without navigation.

The _Hood_ 's limping towards civilization, but they're too far out to make it back under their own power. The communication array took on damage during the ambush, and the best they can hope for is to be able to broadcast a distress beacon.

“This should not have happened.”

Disapproval there, heavy, scathing. 

And the thing of it is, Jason agrees. This really shouldn't have happened, but.

But it takes money to keep the _Hood_ flying, to keep her crew alive, fed. Money they have to earn, and if it means taking jobs from a little shit like Mason, then.

Then Jason probably should have looked a little harder for a job because he knows Mason. Knows he can't be trusted to maintain a professional outlook on things when he's had a personal grudge against Jason for years.

“You're right,” Jason says, because ultimately this is his fault. He's the captain of this merry little band of misfits, which means he's responsible for the jobs they take on. The trouble they run into.

There's a pause. Almost delicate, like the brat isn't quite sure he heard right.

“Todd?”

Jason feels one corner of his mouth pull upward. For all that the brat's convinced of his superiority, he's still a kid. 

“I fucked up,” Jason says, spitting the wires in his mouth out into his hand. A little deft maneuvering on his part in cramped quarters, and he slots them into place with a quiet little _click_. 

“ _Tt_.”

Jason smiles as the console starts up, faint little hum as power flows through the circuitry, and slides out from under the console to face Damian.

Damian got thrown around when the attack happened, down in the engine room bickering with Harper as always. The two of them snapping and snarling at one another, too damn stubborn to admit they might learn something from one another without making a fight of it.

“Don't worry, brat,” he says. “I'll make sure Mason fully understands the error of his ways.”

And then some, because the _Hood_ can take a beating, can handle whatever those pathetic little space pirate wannabes can throw at her, but.

Mason made a mistake when he set this up, offered Jason a job he couldn't refuse. He's an idiot for forgetting Jason's hard to kill – that fucker never learns – but the real mistake was in thinking Jason wouldn't go after him for this, for getting his crew involved.

Damian looks at him for a long moment, too young by far to be doing this kind of thing but every bit as stubborn as Jason ever was. 

Jason's pretty sure this, having Damian dumped on him the way he was is some kind of divine retribution, punishment for what he did in a past life. There's really no other explanation for it.

Another long moment, and then Damian rolls his eyes and turns back to the navigation console like none of this has anything to do with him, like he doesn't give a damn. 

Jason shakes his head and moves on to the next repair waiting to be made, the _Hood_ slowly coming back to life around him, patient and waiting.

********

The thing about this, about the _Hood_ and his misfit crew is that Jason never expected to have it, any of it.

He was a scruffy little street kid on some backwater colony planet, always scrambling to survive. Running and hiding when he could, fighting when he couldn't. 

He never expected to make it to ten, or fifteen, or twenty. Never expected to sign up with the military – but given that choice or spend time in jail, it was no real choice. Not when it got him off a dirty little planet and out into space, got him a roof over his head and three solid meals a day and clothes that fit.

There wasn't an official war on when he signed up, but there's always a fight somewhere. Always someone scrambling to survive, even if for them it meant killing others or taking away someone else's livelihood to line their own pockets. Peddling weapons and drugs and gaunt-faced women, kids.

And maybe Jason was meant for this all along, maybe it was just a coincidence. He didn't know then, and doesn't know now, but that never really mattered. Not when he saw the damage those drugs and weapons did, when he had to look those gaunt-face women and kids in the eye after rescuing them.

Somewhere in there, in between chasing down smugglers and pirates, he caught the eye of a higher up. Some guy he'd never heard of who knew someone else Jason never heard of who was in command of an elite unit.

Jason's new commanding officer had called them hunters, a strange little smile on his face.

A unique operation, working in secret with a handful of ships and even fewer people to crew them. Light transport ships that were re-purposed with a little surprise tucked away inside, bait for the trap. 

Drop the bait - little basket of goodies - and wait for the wolves to come before swooping in.

The transports weren't much to look at, but damn vicious in a fight and faster than people expected. Tough little ships, armed to the teeth with heavily armored hulls. 

They earned reputations for themselves, an elite unit with red tally marks on their helmets for each ship they caught, each ring they helped bring down until you could barely see the original color. Red hoods with their basket of goodies out hunting for wolves. 

They broke more than their share of smuggling rings and pirate organizations, but that was the problem. Greed and corruption taking root and spreading through the upper echelons of the military, going so far as to reach their little unit. 

Small and handpicked and isolated, but not immune to corruption.

All it took to bring things crashing down once everything was in place was a cut in funding, and they were the ones scrambling to survive, prove they were necessary, vital.

Jason lost his crew to a pack of weapons smugglers, their big ugly ship hanging off the bow of his little transport bristling with weapons not about to take prisoners as they launched their first salvo.

His co-pilot and navigator were killed in the initial attack, the rest dying when they were boarded and Jason - 

He never expected to make it to ten, or fifteen, or twenty. Sure as hell didn't expect to make it long past that once he signed up with the military, got sent off to some secret unit. 

He doesn't know how long he held on, wounded and dying in the wreckage of his ship surrounded by the dead. Doesn't know how long it was before being discovered by a less-than legal salvage operation working in an area they shouldn't have been. 

They told him he died, bullets and blood and the cold grating of his ship's cargo hold. Told him his heart stopped beating, that his body shut down. Told him it was impossible, it shouldn't have happened, that it was a goddamned miracle he lived.

Maybe it was, or maybe Jason was just too goddamned stubborn to die, like his commanding officers used to say. Maybe, but the thing is. 

The thing is that never having expected this, any of this. Living as long as he has, piloting the ship he does and taking on the crew he has? Makes Jason want to fight that much harder to keep it by any means necessary, vicious and ruthless and take no prisoners.

********

Mason is the kind of asshole who thinks he's untouchable, that if he gathers enough money, enough people around him, he's safe. 

What he doesn't take into consideration is that money alone only buys him so much when he takes his people for granted, treats them like shit and doesn't realize they're only there for the money and the prestige his name gives them. 

“Hello, Mason.”

He's also the kind of asshole who's never had to struggle to make a living, never had to suffer hardship or loss or helplessness in the face of either. Born to rich parents, he'd fallen in with the wrong crowd and then taken that crowd over with lies and manipulation and murder.

“I'm back.”

There's a horrified look on Mason's face and he keeps hitting the panic button on the underside of his desk like he thinks help's coming. 

That's another thing about people like Mason. They always underestimate the people they fuck over, never stopping to think that maybe they do have limits, and why it's a bad idea to push them beyond those limits. Never wondering if maybe they do have teeth after all.

“That's not going to work,” Jason says.

The guys Mason's hired to protect him went down fast and easy, more muscle than brain. Jason's been a fighter his entire life, one way or another. He hasn't always been the biggest or meanest, the strongest or the fastest, but he's always been among the most stubborn.

“J-Jason - “

“I thought you'd like to know we brought the cargo back,” Jason says, smiling, teeth bared. “It's on the _Hood_.”

Jason thought about letting things go, of biting back his pride and anger again and collecting their payment. Letting Mason think he'd won this one again, but.

But there's the _Hood_ and Harper and Cullen, and goddamn Damian. There's the suicide mission Mason had sent them on, knowing how strapped for funds Jason was. How little choice he'd had. Knowing all about the little ambush the pirates had set up at Mason's word.

Mason's just staring at him, pale and terrified and taking the fun out of this for Jason because Mason isn't a fighter, isn't anything but a kid with delusions of grandeur. If it's not Jason now, it'd be someone worse down the road, someone who'd make Mason suffer, make him beg, and Jason's tired.

He's seen enough of this kind of shit, double-crosses and betrayals, jealousy and petty grudges to last him a lifetime. And if there's one thing the military drilled into his skull, it's to never leave an enemy at his back.

Mason has to know what's coming, what he deserves, but first - 

“Why don't we discuss payment?”

It takes money to keep the _Hood_ flying, after all. Money to keep his crew alive.

********

Harper eyes him when he hands her the credit chit Mason so generously gave to him, and sets to work getting the _Hood_ space worthy again, chivvying Cullen along and barking orders at Damian.

She knows how Jason got it, knows they won't have to worry about Mason anymore. Damian probably does too, but he's a bloodthirsty little bastard and Jason had to fight to keep him from following him when he went to see Mason. Cullen...it's a toss-up as to whether or not he realizes yet, but given the way he goes along with Harper's pushing and shoving with only a weak protest, Jason thinks he does.

Jason sighs, leans back to look up at the _Hood_ , resting in dry-dock on a dusty little planet where they won't get dragged into the power struggle over the void Mason's death left. 

He can hear Damian squawking at Harper, hear her answering shouts. Imagines he hears Cullen's exasperated sighs, trying to play peacemaker as though he's not in any way biased.

The _Hood_ towers above him, solid and steady. She's survived everything the universe has thrown at her and shows every sign of continuing to do so. Tougher than she looks, meaner than anything.

Jason looks at her and remembers their old crew, cool and collected and military trained. Remembers the straight lines of their uniforms, textbook perfect salutes and respect for the chain of command. Remembers the ships they used to chase, the smugglers and pirates they used to hunt.

Thinks about how much things have changed since then, how often he's worked alongside smugglers and pirates willingly or otherwise. How he damn well owes his life to one, and is stuck paying her back for what looks like the rest of his life, or maybe just until Damian's had enough of his shit and stages a bloody coup.

He doesn't know how he ended up here anymore than he knows how anything in his life happened. How he managed to get off a dirtball planet like this one to the stars when he was younger, or how everything went to shit a few years after that, or how he started rebuilding his life without being aware of it. 

What he does know is that he has a habit of making shit terrible decisions, ones that land him in trouble more often than not, but.

But there's Damian tearing out of the cargo hold, near-permanent scowl on his face and mouth already open to spew insults and complaints in equal measure. There's Cullen trying to hold Harper back as she waves a wrench at Damian, and Jason - 

Well, every once in a while he gets it right, or maybe just close enough to right that it doesn't matter.


End file.
